Security
Using Secure Passwords
This morning, this article about a Facebook board member’s account being breached inspired me to touch on passwords again. I’ve talked about secure passwords in the past, but on a daily basis I am confronted by people that talk about not wanting to use a more secure password because it “would be hard to remember” but then they will complain when their Facebook or Twitter accounts are hacked.
Security Flaw in Popular Disk Encryption Programs Found
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published an article about a research paper that shows how popular disk encryption software can be defeated. The article (found here) explains that popular disk encryption programs like BitLocker (Windows Vista’s disk encryption program) and open source favorite, TrueCrypt, are not invulnerable to the suggested attacks.
Spread OpenID Site Launced (Do These Really Help?)
My question is, do the sites really work? I mean Firefox is doing fine true, but that was more due to the full page New York Times ad that SpreadFirefox helped raise money for. So while the website itself brought the community together for the purpose of marketing, is it the website or rather the efforts of those behind the website that are helping the products? I guess one could argue that they are one and the same. However, why create a second website? OpenID already has a pretty nice looking website (OpenID.net). Does it really need a second one to explain the benefits and such of OpenID?
Who Owns Your Data? (Scoble/Facebook)
So it calls into question, who exactly owns the data on the social network sites? We all automatically assume that because we put the data there, add the friends, make the connections, install the applications (linking them to their respective site where applicable) that we own that data. After all the data is about us. We input it, why should we not own it? That is where the privacy issues come from. If you don’t own the data on a social networking site, then who does own the data, and what can they legally do with that data? These are some serious issues to concern yourself with. If you do not own that data and the site can do with it whatever it pleases, then you basically have zero privacy when it comes to your data on that particular site.
Google & Your Privacy
So over the Christmas holidays, Google added a feature to Google Reader that caused some privacy concerns. While I’m not sure why everyone was in such a fit about it, because the feature was in fact called “Shared Items” so I don’t understand how that could be mis-interpreted.
But now there are rumors that Google is [...]
Securing Your Digital World: Encryption (Part 1)
Lets review real quick. Passwords, check. Secure passwords, check. Preventing phishing, check. So by now you are secure right? Probably not completely. Here is a real quick question. Are you sending emails? Are you sending those emails via encrypted means? If no, then anyone can read your email. If you did not know, I will tell you now, emails are sent in clear text. That means that anyone who packet sniffs a network that your email is flying across, can read that email. Same is true for most instant messaging applications. Your messages are sent out in the open and anyone with the correct software can read them as if they were the one sending them.
